The launch of Arc Raiders draws near, and besides the pre-launch event we got to experience, we also got the opportunity to interview the game’s design director, Virgil Watkins. We talked about his thoughts on community tools, how map conditions work, the road to the game’s release, what comes after, and many more things.
Interview With Arc Raiders’ Design Director, Virgil Watkins
Julio La Pine, Senior Staff Writer for The Nerd Stash: First of all, nice to meet you, and thank you so much for making time for me. I imagine that it is crazy right now with the launch in a few days. But as a first unofficial question, how are you feeling with just a couple of days before the release of Arc Raiders, which a lot of people, myself included, are eagerly awaiting?
Virgil Watkins, Design Director of Arc Raiders: A mix of excited and exhausted, I think, is the best way to summarize it. But yeah, truly, it’s been for me a little over four years on the project, for some six, almost seven years. So, having it finally come to fruition and be out there is exciting.
Julio: As the first official question, with just a handful of tech tests and the server slam weekend, there has already been an extensive amount of community for Arc Raiders. How does the team feel when seeing that level of support grow over time?
Virgil: It’s really gratifying. When we had Tech Test 2, we did not expect that reaction. We obviously liked the game, and we were very confident about what we were doing, and wanted to get opinions on it. In the previous tests, there was some quiet enthusiasm, but that obviously just exploded. It was a bit of a shock, I think.
Suddenly having that much attention, hype, and focus. Then people thought the game was ready and wanted us to launch it, but we knew we had more to do by a fair bit. So, from TT2 (Tech Test 2) and up to now, it has been a great reinforcement for the team because there can be a bit of nerves launching a new IP entirely, coming into this genre, so it is a good validation point for the team, who still had some nerves around how the game would be received, so I think it has worked out well.
Julio: Many extraction shooter players rely on external websites that use an API of sorts. Do you have any plans to release official tools for fans and such to create these sites, or do you prefer some of the clockwork to remain behind the scenes for now?
Virgil: We don’t have any current plans to do an API setup for two reasons. From the beginning of the project, you know, a lot of these games have external maps, and wikis, and things like that. What we really wanted to try to do was to see if that was information that the players would find valuable; we wanted to try to put it in the game first and give players enough information so that they don’t always have to reference an external asset to get around or figure things out.
But I completely get the value of those things, and I, of course, used that in plenty of other games, so it is something I find personally interesting. The whole API fan-made stuff is something I would certainly keep an eye out for. We’re going to try to keep all the good info for players in the game, so they don’t have to use a second monitor or something else. But we know it will happen.
Julio: One of the biggest aspects of the game is map conditions. Will these operate across all maps on a set schedule, or are they randomized for all players?
Virgil: It’s not randomized for all players. It will be consistent about which one is running. So, it is scheduled in that fashion. There are some map conditions that can be done at any level, which we designed to work universally. And there will be some that are only on a few maps. That kind of ranges in complexity for what the map condition is.
Julio: I like that a lot. I’m already planning to have alarms to see when it’s time for the night raid, you know?
Virgil: Hopefully, it’s more forgiving so that you won’t need an alarm. We’ll try to make the cadence pretty often, so you aren’t like, “Oh, I need to wake up at 4 am to catch this thing.” I can’t promise that it won’t sometimes happen, but yeah, we’re going to try to get good coverage so people can, in a normal play session, have a good shot at playing a few different fun things.
Julio: Also, we wanted to take the time to congratulate you on the game’s official launch and ask if it feels like the finish line is ahead or the start of the next leg of a marathon?
Virgil: Yeah, it’s much more like that. We’re about to flip from primary development into live service, so it is more of a continuation, and we have no intention of slowing down. I think we need to be more careful once it’s live, obviously, to put our stuff out there. It is a finish for some, and it’s finally released, but it’s go time.
Julio: Speaking of marathons, the team has already mentioned that they see Arc Raiders as a 10-year game. However, were there any features that you wanted to add for the launch date that didn’t make it to the final build?
Virgil: Truthfully, I don’t think so. We tried to be very careful in how we planned our features, so I think the actual answer is that we managed to squeeze a few extra things in for launch or coming very quickly after launch. So, I think we hit that pretty well.
I mean, there’s probably something in the smaller side of things, like we could’ve done a few more quality-of-life things, like in the crafting system. We did have to split our time there, or spend our time wisely to get something in, versus really polishing something else. There’s a bit of that, I think. But we’re going to continue to push on that stuff after launch.
Julio: Going back to the 10-year plan, we’ve seen many live service games launching updates in different time spans, from every three months or like a season, and even every few weeks. In your opinion, what do you think is a good time frame for updates in an extraction shooter?
Virgil: I think we’re testing the waters here, really. We’re going to put out a roadmap a little bit later this week that kind of has stuff about our upcoming features on it. But we kind of have a cadence that we think makes sense. And to clarify, it’s not a 10-year plan, so much as a 10-year ambition. So, we’ll have to see how that goes.
But you know, it will include the rational things, like new maps, new map conditions, new items, and all of that. We’ll see some stuff, so players can start participating in or poking at right now at launch, and then we’re going to kind of go from there. Part of our structure is that we can react pretty quickly to stuff, so we’ll see how players take things. What they enjoy, what they don’t enjoy, what works, what doesn’t. And we’ll try to adjust from there, rather than try to stick super rigidly to a thing. The roadmap should explain some things we have coming up for players to do right after we’re going live.
Julio: How have you felt after watching all the clips of players being chased by Leapers or exploding by Pops? Are some of these clips validating the design choice on difficulty and tuning for Arcs and the tension they provide to the experience?
Virgil: It is super validating. I think if our AI enemies weren’t as smart or as punishing or as deadly as they are, a lot of the experience would get diminished. We went through phases where the enemies were far weaker, and it got to the point where you could just ignore them. They were almost a non-factor in how you played. That meant PvP became super ramped up, but it lost a lot of the texture of what makes up a round where you actually have to be very considerate of, “Do I shoot? If I do, a drone’s going to come?” So, I think we need to leave them where they are because it creates so much variety and so much interest in how situations play out.
For anyone who only played server slam, then you’re on the weaker end of what weapons and gear you could have, so I feel pretty good in the way they are tuned in the way you have to be pretty careful around them in the earlier game, but then as your knowledge of them increases, as your progression increases, as you get access to better weapons, or more effective weapons, you start to see your power curve shift relative to them. You feel much more capable of dealing with that, and it turns from “Oh God, run away” to “No, guys, we got this.” So you can very handily move through these situations. I think we’ve created a pretty good curve. But we’ll have to see how it goes.
Julio: One thing I am very curious about is the sound design, which is one of the best I’ve ever seen —or, in this case, heard. How challenging was it for the team to create such a high-quality sound design, especially in a multiplayer environment with dozens of players and several enemy Arcs in real-time?
Virgil: I can’t speak to that super directly; that would be more for our audio director and his team. But, honestly, the amount of attention to detail and effort they put into it is astounding. A lot of it comes from the fact that, when they need sounds for something, they try to record them practically, whenever possible. So, they are recording real objects, real things moving, and combining that together, and I think that creates a rich soundscape where everything sounds believable and has all this real-life nuance to it, and of course.
I certainly love it, and the audio can be as authentic as possible, and you can truly hear that gunshot from 800 meters away, and go, “Oh, that sounded far.” But you hear one from a room and it’s echo-y and rattles things around you, and you go, “Oh, that’s really close. It sounds very impactful.” When you get all of that at the same time, it brings you into the experience. It has definitely helped us in designing the experience with the audio in mind because we can rely on it being so good and so compelling. It helps create that atmosphere.
Julio: For the final question, if you could send out one final message to the Arc Raiders fans and would-be players ahead of launch, what would you like to say?
Virgil: I think we tried to create a game as inviting and as approachable as possible for this genre. It can be very daunting or tough to get into. I would encourage people who are maybe a little nervous about it or curious about it to just give it a try and see if those things we’ve put in the game to make it more approachable and a little more fun for someone who might not be super into this style of play, see if it clicks with them.
I hope this resonates with what your experience was of just getting in and being in the world, and being able to choose what to do, and not being forced into PvP or anything in particular. That we’ve given you enough options to play how you want to play and how you feel comfortable playing. And that’s not to say you won’t get into tricky situations or bad moments, but I hope that comes together as the sum of the parts that feels compelling and interesting. And if you tried it and if it’s still not for you, fine.
But I’d really like to try and get more people into this style of game, so that they can experience those moments and stories that can unfold throughout these rounds and come out with a really compelling experience that you can tell someone else about. They get excited because of how excited you are. I really want to see what we can do to open up the door for more people coming in and experiencing that style of game.
